Relationship Status? It's Complicated
on my ongoing and very messy breakup with Amazon
Hello readers! Today’s newsletter is about a topic I am very passionate about, but also have been hesitant to talk about ~ my ongoing attempt to break up with Amazon, as well as the books that helped push me over the edge. Today’s essay is longer than usual, so grab your favorite beverage and settle in!
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I can not EVEN with this. Photo by Andrew Stickelman on Unsplash
Breaking Up is Hard to Do
I think that the only other thing I have felt more reluctant to talk about publicly was my decision to quit drinking alcohol back in December 2019. I distinctly remember at the time telling almost no one because I was so nervous about people feeling like I was judging their decision TO drink, and of course, my choice had absolutely nothing to do with them, but of course, people definitely thought it *said things* about their choice. So complicated.
This is different, though. My family’s recent decision to resist Amazon and shop elsewhere really is kind of about everyone because every person who joins in the resistance can help their local economy and small online businesses, put business back with unionized delivery companies, keep our roads safer, and protect their own privacy. That’s why I finally decided to hit publish on this piece. Because maybe some of you are also contemplating this move, but weren’t sure yet. I’m here to show that it can be (messily) done.
Our Prime membership ended on June 28, 2024 - yes, just last month
The Privilege of Quitting
Before I go on, I must acknowledge the privilege of my position.
Unlike my breakup with alcohol, attempting to quit Amazon is a privilege not everyone has. Despite Amazon’s corporate overlord evil nature, they do also bring a very real service to millions of people who don’t have access to stores selling what they need, can’t afford to pay the real price of what things cost and depend on Amazon’s below-cost pricing, and who depend on home delivery due to physical or mental health needs. I fully recognize all of these things. If this is you, you’re doing all you can and that is totally fine.
However, many of us CAN afford to shop elsewhere. We DO have access to stores selling what we need, or have the privilege of time to look elsewhere online. We DO have enough discretionary income to express our convictions through our spending. If this is you, maybe there is one small action you could take today? Read on for how and why.
How We Met
A little backstory first for anyone new here. My family lives in rural Wisconsin about 30 minutes from the nearest grocery or big box store. We are the only house on our mile-long dead end road. My husband drives for a unionized international delivery company and is a union steward. I am also a proud union member in my local education association. All that to say, we don’t live minutes from stores or even near a big city, so access to everything we need is not simply a quick trip away. We are solidly middle class. And unions matter deeply to us.
I remember so distinctly writing a paper in 2000 for my taxation class during my accountancy undergrad about Amazon and their unique taxation situation regarding interstate shipping and the regulations around brick and mortar facilities. Amazon was so innovative and revolutionizing e-commerce, and I so very much wish all of my college papers weren’t stored on floppy disks ~ I would give anything to be able to pull this one up again!
We were Amazon Prime members as long as Amazon Prime was a thing. I remember being proud of how much work Amazon brought my husband’s company, and how every time one of their trucks delivered an Amazon package to our house I smiled a bit because we were helping their volume. When the postal service was said to be going out of business, I remember doing my part to keep them afloat by, you guessed it, ordering from Amazon. I figured, I can’t buy (some of) this stuff locally, so at least I’m helping the delivery services! And the $79 annual membership at that time surely was worth all of that shipping we otherwise would have been paying, and of course they must be fairly compensating the delivery companies. Sigh.
With Amazon Marketplace, I remember feeling happy that I could help support small businesses and what a great thing it was that Amazon was providing them with logistics services.
When Kindles first hit the market, I got one as soon as we could afford it. I was ecstatic, although couldn’t afford to actually buy many books for it, so relied heavily on the free or sale content. The public library integration in 2011 was a revelation and savior. Starting in 2014, the allure of Kindle Unlimited was too much for me and I have paid for the service on and off over the past ten years.
I joined Audible in 2008, as soon as I had a device that could fit full audiobooks ~ my trusty SansaClip. Being able to walk and run with audiobooks was life-changing, although the downloading books to my computer and then transferring them to the mp3 player was a bit cumbersome. Still better than books on CD though!
For years and years we ordered at least weekly from Amazon. I had Subscribe and Save subscriptions. I bought stuff I could have found at the grocery store down the street from my school. My husband ordered all of our car parts from Amazon. We were fully in the Amazon sphere and really not all that unhappy about it.
The Beginning of the End
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My husband and I were outraged about all of the Amazon-bad-behavior in the news for years, ranting to each other about it while simultaneously placing a one-click order for random items. Our moral outrage, however, didn’t translate to changes in behavior until recently. Over the past year, we started not only realizing that our behavior needed to follow our convictions, but the following seemingly minor, but cumulatively large, things also occurred:
Almost overnight, packages went from being delivered by FedEx, UPS and USPS, to being delivered by completely random people in unmarked vehicles. We live on a road with zero traffic and are used to the official delivery services’ schedules. These deliveries were at all hours, in vehicles I couldn’t identify, and they deeply unsettled me. I later learned just how unregulated these drivers and vehicles are.
Free 2-day shipping started transforming into free maybe-4-day-shipping. It was no longer faster to order from Prime than to just wait until the next time I was near a store or to just order from elsewhere online.
Numerous times the car parts (brake pads, etc) that my husband ordered for our car repairs were the wrong items, a different brand than he had ordered, in open packaging, etc. I later learned how prevalent this is on Amazon Marketplace as well as the sometimes-fatal consequences of such errors.
Searching became increasingly frustrating, with a search for “Adidas soccer shorts” showing almost anything but that, with the items I actually wanted deeply buried. It became easier to just search on the Adidas or Dick’s Sporting Goods sites for the kids’ sports stuff I used to order. I then learned how Amazon manipulates their search to favor their own products and sponsored products.
I searched for a sweatshirt to wear for a theme day at school and realized that Amazon now does print-to-ship clothing via their Merch on Demand service. While they promote this as a way to let independent designers sell their work, after doing some digging I’m not convinced it’s good for anyone but Amazon.
When searching for classic literature titles, I realized that many of the offerings, not just on Kindle, weren’t by actual publishers, but instead random individuals taking work from the public domain and sloppily repackaging it to sell on Amazon. And then there’s the matter of AI and rewrites and plagiarism.
During this time period I was ordering stuff we didn’t really need because “free shipping” and it was so so so damn easy. Letting Subscribe and Save orders ship that we didn’t need or want because I would forget to cancel them. Ordering products from sellers I didn’t feel morally great about, including that damn print-on-demand sweatshirt that I 100% should have ordered from a seller on Etsy at the very least, but I was simply too impatient to do so.
Then I read two books that made me realize that all of the things listed above are indicators of the increasingly concerning issues that Amazon presents to consumers and businesses alike. These two books are what caused us to finally cancel our Prime subscription at the end of June.
The Breakup Books
The Everything War by Dana Mattioli ~ this book enraged me beyond belief and is what convinced me to finally consider quitting Amazon. It is a very in-the-weeds look at the political and legal mechanizations of Amazon, leading up to the current antitrust lawsuit by the Federal Trade Commission against the company. I absolutely devoured this, but if you don’t love nerdy legal books, you should definitely just skip ahead to……
How to Resist Amazon and Why by Danny Caine ~ this one is perfectly concise and written by a bookseller. It is excellent on audio and covers all of the reasons that pushed me to finally pull the plug on Prime. I canceled the day I finished listening to this book. I can not recommend it highly enough!
Both of the above books are excellent, but neither of these cover inside employee dirt extensively, so if you want a gossip-y and “screw you, I’m out” take from the Amazon C-suite, definitely also read …….
Exit Interview by Kristi Coulter ~ this tell-all memoir from a high level executive driven to intense burnout by the Amazon culture was one of my favorite memoirs this year so far. Excellent on audio! But make sure to also read How to Resist Amazon and Why!!!
Looking for even more reading on this topic? Check out the Make the Switch reading list from Libro.fm!
Why It’s Complicated
It was relatively easy to find new sources for the exact physical products I used to buy on Amazon ~ all the things I wanted to buy in the past few weeks I sourced elsewhere with just a bit more time and sometimes a slightly longer delivery period. I have vowed to never buy another physical book from Amazon and am certain I can hold fast to that resolution.
But it’s the digital bookish stuff that is keeping me tied to the company at all.
I am not ready to leave my Kindle for so many reasons, including the integration with Libby and Sora library apps, the integration with my digital review copy sources, and the simple fact that I love it. I love my Kindle Paperwhite more than almost anything else I own. I did try canceling my Kindle Unlimited subscription for a bit, but am not sure I won’t be going back to it ~ there are so many “smaller” authors whose romance books I have discovered there, and I adore the Read & Listen selection. Oh, and the comfort of the literal concept of Unlimited ~ hello scarcity mindset! I need to unpack that. When I ask myself if I would just buy the Kindle Unlimited books separately, the answer is maybe but probably not, especially for authors I haven’t read before and aren’t traditionally published. I usually just use the library for books that are easily found in print, so my KU books are typically books from Amazon imprints (Lake Union, Montlake, etc) or self-published authors. Am I helping them or harming them? I don’t know?
I’m really thinking hard about this, and will see how things play out without the subscription. I am increasingly concerned about the AI content now flooding KU, so that may help me stay away? I do also buy some individual non-KU Kindle books, but I know that authors receive royalties from them, so that makes me feel marginally better, especially since then there isn’t any physical waste or related shipping environmental costs.
And Audible. I switched my subscription to one credit every two months and increased my Libro.fm subscription, so I am definitely making progress there. I tell myself that I can’t cancel it completely because I share it with my sister, but also …. I also like the comfort that the Audible Plus catalog brings me ~ knowing that there are ALWAYS books there, even though I barely use the Plus catalog. Hello scarcity mindset again! I’m weaning myself off this, but with the volume of audiobooks I listen to, it really is probably the hardest thing to walk away from and biggest monetary sacrifice. And OMG I know this all sounds so hypocritical because above I was just saying that I can afford to pay a bit more for my convictions. Ugh. Like I said, it’s complicated and I’m working on it. I want to be fully off Audible within a year.
Patience is a Virtue
My impulse control has never been stellar and there’s a major reason I chose “patience” as my word of the year for 2024 ~ it’s exactly what I needed for this situation. As I have been untangling myself from Amazon, I realized that lack of both planning and patience was what kept me tied to the company for this long. The formerly relatively quick shipping meant I could get things NOW and I didn’t have to think more than a few days ahead. It meant I could order an unnecessary sweatshirt for a last-minute theme day at school ~ and I hate theme days. Why did I even buy a sweatshirt? Why didn’t I just tell myself that purchasing special clothes for theme days doesn’t fit with my convictions regarding clothes purchasing ……. and leave it? Why did I immediately go to Amazon in a panic and order something I knew would be worn few times and be of questionable quality from a questionable source? If I would have had to drive to a store or wait a week for shipping, there is NO WAY I would have ordered the damn sweatshirt. Now I won’t be able to.
Patience. Mindful consumption. Those are my values.
This is honestly the most complicated relationship I have tried to end since breaking up with my incredibly toxic boyfriend at age 21. This is harder than quitting alcohol was for me. And honestly, that’s one reason I knew it was time to try to get out. How can one company have such a stranglehold on us?
Two On-Topic Substack Reads
I want to share two pieces I found last week while searching Substack for other people who are furious about Amazon. I didn’t find many, which is so interesting to me! BUT, this recent piece by is a great insider’s take on Amazon’s treatment of warehouse staff as well as their blatant disregard for regulation. And this piece on is a hilarious but also infuriating tale of Kindle and AI content.
Do you use Amazon? Do you have an Amazon Prime membership? What’s your relationship with the company? Have you quit Amazon or ever contemplated quitting? So much juicy stuff to consider and discuss, especially as Prime Days approach next week!
That’s all for today ~ thanks for reading!
Thanks for stopping by!
